BlogTalkRadio: Altering Media, Business and Personal Perspectives

BlogTalkRadio continues to change perspectives. Whether it’s how people look at radio, the Internet, or that staple of the American home: the phone.

Yesterday’s Portfolio‘s piece on BlogTalkRadio has also changed a few perspectives about me.

Martin Varsavsky is a fellow entrepreneur and founder of numerous companies. I was an accountant in NYC twenty years ago when Martin asked me to join him to be CFO at Viatel. He gave me an opportunity to change the direction of my career.

…my view of Alan Levy changed when I saw how he could successfully blend old style telephony with an exciting new format and the result is BlogTalkRadio. This week I was going to write an elaborate article in order to explain how is it that BlogTalkRadio democratizes the talk radio format using the internet and telephones and makes it available for all but I found out that Conde Nast Portfolio saved me from doing the research. Here’s a great article summarizing BlogTalkRadio.

Martin himself is a visionary entrepreneur who has founded many companies. His current project is FON, whose mission is to make WiFi universal and free by creating a unified global community of members who share WiFi. It’s already the world’s largest WiFi community.

I’ve always said I’m not your typical web 2.0 CEO. I’m not in the age range and I didn’t grow up with the Internet. Again, I’m changing perspectives on what people expect from a web 2.0 company. But I have a vision where everyone can join the conversation and have a voice that can be heard worldwide. And this citizen broadcasting network, BlogTalkRadio, is that vision that’s changing perspectives across the business, radio and Internet worlds.

Martin saw something in me that I perhaps not seen in myself. His confidence in me twenty years ago will always be appreciated.